Re: Want a linux box to talk with NIT but dont want to buy one: USE YOUR WIN PC
 

Well, some liveCDs let you throw tons of stuff in a ramdisk, so while bootup time rivals Vista, they're quite snappy in operation. They'd be my recommendation for this sort of thing. Although with CDs being decent speed, but high latency, I'd recommend installing to a USB drive if you plan to use it much, and not bothering to load to ram.

I've never mucked with wubi; to me it looks like a train-wreck waiting to happen, but any damage should be strictly to the Linux side, not Windows, so I suppose it's cool for this, too.

Heh, Mandrake (first and tied-for-worst distro I ever used) did that back around 2000, as best as I remember. Out of the three times I tried it, it only junked the NTFS once.

I use it, and I get most stuff I want without compiling; but I haven't got to flashing the tablet from it, and that would require building from source. Moreover, it's not gonna sell UNIX to anyone but developer types.

I think modern friendly distros are actually pretty good about making clear that you're ready to trash major data, and at providing alternatives, but you should definitely take that attitude unless you've got a knowledgable person in the house to check things at critical stages. ;) (Yeah, a couple times it's been my job to holler "No! No, don't!!" at people...) My advice, for desktops at least, is to toss in a blank hard drive, and install linux to it. Avoid all partition resizing issues, and it's easy for even a newb to tell whether this is the old Windows drive or the new blank drive from in the installer. Backup anyway considering the stakes, but the risk is really very low.

Re: Want a linux box to talk with NIT but dont want to buy one: USE YOUR WIN PC
 

Benson: I agree on all points: But one thing to note is that the ramdisk you are referring too is still limited in size to the amount of memory you have (I believe.. if I'm wrong correct me) - So to boot a linux and load entire OS into memory would mean that for my computer with 2GB of memory; i'm not going to get more than 2gb worth of software to try..

Knoppix; and I think the *ubuntu types; use compression on their DVD's.. which means you get upwards of 4+GB worth of software on the DVD.. and it only uncompresses and uses the software you try; which loads into memory - and after it's initial load will run OK; until you launch 3 other applications which overwrite the first app in memory and it has to decompress again.. etc.. which is why those run extremely slow.

I have never tried the suggestions that geneven had put forth; so I don't know the software on them (course google will tell me :D) - if it has a decent range of various types of software on them then they would be fine.. but if they are just raw Linux with a basic KDE/gnome manager and no real extras then it doesn't really give the user much to play with.

As to your last suggestion; I do agree using a new HDD is a safer alternative to have a fast Linux; AND not risk windows; but I dunno the type of people you deal with on a day to day basis: But I deal with government types - I wouldn't want them anywhere near the internal of one of these machines.. let alone ask them to add a new HDD..

Re: Want a linux box to talk with NIT but dont want to buy one: USE YOUR WIN PC
 

Yeah, but what do you want with more than 2 GB of software? If only the liveCD could predict which 1~1.5 GB you'd want. ;)

I've used Mutagenix in the past; most any liveCD, though, lets you remaster with the packages you use. We're moving pretty far from newb-trying-stuff-out territory, of course, but that's what I was thinking when I wrote that...

That's a good point, re: my overestimation of users' abilities. Mostly I deal with family, who are decently knowledgeable about computers in general, but not about Linux/UNIX in particular, much less the particular "friendly" installer in use.

Re: Want a linux box to talk with NIT but dont want to buy one: USE YOUR WIN PC
 

Again, I am always with the uninitiated. For the uninitiated, if you choose this route, stick in a new HD, that is a very good idea. Make sure you take out the other hard drives, as window can reassign drive letters. Depends on your hardware configuration, there is a chance that the HD 'D' you think it is, is NOT the hard drive 'D' and you end up partitioned and formatted the existing drive instead of the new drive you put in. Of course, check the content of the drive, or give the hd a name instead of relying on drive letter prevents this silly disaster. Please, DONT ASK ME HOW I LEARNED THIS ONE, the answer is way too obvious and painful :(


bun

Re: Want a linux box to talk with NIT but dont want to buy one: USE YOUR WIN PC
 

One should always have off-site backups of important data, and an image of Windows pristine/vanilla is also highly recommended.

WUBI is well tested and officially part of the Ubuntu distribution. If you break your Ubuntu which was installed by WUBI you can simply use WUBI to reinstall Ubuntu as if nothing ever happened. The advantage is that this installation is easy read, point & click while still native speed. A USB drive has much more overhead, like a CD/DVD, than running the OS native from a NTFS partition.

If you're a little bit more technical inclined its easy & fast to try out _and_ use a new OS. Download the virtual appliance, load it in VMware Player or VirtualBox or any VM which can read the open standard VM images and off you go. This way one can run Linux, *BSD, Haiku, Solaris, OSX, Windows, and yes even a Linux distribution with pre-installed & pre-configured Scratchbox & appropriate tools.

Re: Want a linux box to talk with NIT but dont want to buy one: USE YOUR WIN PC
 

I'm asked how much software is available on the Linuxes run from a bootable CD. Actually, I was thinking more of a bootable DVD, since that's mainly what I have run. The answer is tons. How many tons? Well, Sidux is a full-fledged Debian-based distribution, so that is what, 10,000-30,000 programs? Puppy Linux and Slackware-based distros like Wolvix are a bit less. Still a lot.

Now, I suppose you are asking how many you can have access to at one time? Let me reply with a counter-question--how many programs do you use on a day-to-day basis? Maybe I use 50, at a guess. Maybe 500, at the most. Certainly even on a CD there's plenty of room for those. I'd say that the distribution with the tiniest number of programs available among those I've listed would be Puppy Linux on a CD. Maybe it has I don't know, 300 programs? How many users run 300 programs? Especially if, as specified, they are just trying out Linux to experience its wonder?

I would say that the most newbie-friendly Linux is Puppy Linux, especially if you add in the very friendly community of users that hang out, mainly at www.puppylinux.org in the forums.

Let me add another question. How much overhead as opposed to Linux running from a partition does Linux running 100% from memory? I would guess that where the Linux comes from has little effect -- once it is running from memory, it doesn't matter where it comes from. Correct?

Re: Want a linux box to talk with NIT but dont want to buy one: USE YOUR WIN PC
 

Correct; but CDs are slowish, but mainly take forever to spin up, so anything not loaded into RAM on boot may have up to a half-minute wait to load from CD; then it's in RAM, and is fast. That's the main disadvantage... (and effects depend greatly on the particular distro, of course.)

Re: Want a linux box to talk with NIT but dont want to buy one: USE YOUR WIN PC
 

Ok, so a "selling point" of something like Puppy Linux is that it runs 100% in memory so it's blazing fast even when booted from CD -- and in my experience it doesn't take that long to boot from CD. (Wolvix is another excellent distro that has running entirely from memory as a selectable feature -- with Puppy it's not selectable, it's automatic if you're booting from CD or DVD.) These distros don't have the slowness feature much-mentioned above.

Re: Want a linux box to talk with NIT but dont want to buy one: USE YOUR WIN PC
 

Yes. I like mutagenix (slack-based), which also does that (optionally), but I don't keep track of which other ones do and don't. Still, loading everything to RAM imposes a limit on how many (and thus, which) apps are available. (Not a problem, if you're not afraid to remaster with a different package selection; you don't need more than 2-300 MB worth, but it's getting the right ones. Or if you just install extra software each time you boot. Not newb-friendly either of those ways, though.)

Don't get me wrong, I'm a liveCD booster too; but each method has it's disadvantages.

Re: Want a linux box to talk with NIT but dont want to buy one: USE YOUR WIN PC
 

As for subject, I'm still thinking in this way: if you want Linux box, just get it. With VMWare you will rather get something virtual and toy-like which is quite slow and has quite shitty peripherial devices set. Actually supported peripherial devices set is very limited and those devices which are implemented have dozen of bugs, issues, limitations or just hurt VM performance to the hell. For example, USB in VMWare is a way far from perfect and sometimes may behave... er... at least, strange. And why average Joe want to mess with Linux? Maybe to toggle R&D flags? Or reflash with advanced options? And all this over half-baked VMWare usb support? Compiling? It's quite slow, CPU and disk intensive and mem-hog so vmware is still poor choice here and will provide unpleasant experience. And so on. Surely it can work, but it's still a bit like a rubber women...

Imho, VMWare is a great tool to preview some system without crashing things and as a test tool for system crashing activities, etc but as a long-term desktop environment vmware machine sucks and has many nasty limitations and issues you will dislike in long term. So, IMHO, if you want to use vmware or not strongly depends on what exactly and how long you're willing to do. If you're going to take a look on system and then delete this system after 10 minutes, VMWare serves well, saving from reboots (though advanced stuff like 3D effects or sound or some peripherial stuff may not operate properly and OS install on vmware is a really s-l-o-w since no vmtools can run at this point).If you're going to live with system for a months, you will feel vmware limits at some point but re-starting from scratch is always annoying (yeah, I do not know any easy way to convert VM disk into a real OS installation so I see only option to restart from scratch if VMWare gets tight at some point).